Appreciative inquiry and leadership transitions

In times of accelerated change accompanied by leadership transitions, Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and sensemaking skills are necessary. AI is a philosophy, a model of change, and a set of tools and techniques that support discovery, dreaming, design, and creation of a vision that inspires people in an organization to move toward a collective destiny. Sensemaking involves sizing up a situation to create a framework for decision-making, creating a context for communication, linking with others, and focusing on what is and what could be. Sensemaking can be facilitated by applying appreciative leadership techniques. In this article, the story of the University of Utah College of Nursing’s and the faculty’s experience with an AI process illustrates the application of the AI leadership strategy to navigating organizational change and a leadership transition.

Dialogue on leadership development

Interview

Authors: C. Manohar Reddy*, Vasanthi Srinivasan

Sharing our considerable experience as teachers who have designed and conducted leadership development programmes, we discuss the challenges in the field of leadership development. We distinguish between leader development and leadership development; differentiate leadership theories from leadership development theories; discuss the goals of leadership development programmes and their implications for the design of such programmes e the knowing, being and doing gap and how the goal, cognitive understanding vs. deeper internalization vs. transformation would impact the design; the need to synthesize Western and Indian approaches to leadership development; and the importance of designing coherent leadership development programmes which combine multiple methods and approaches.

The purpose of this paper was to clarify the nature of how servant leadership is established and transmitted among members of an organization. The second goal was to identify and evaluate the unique actions by a leader essential to establishing servant leadership. The authors’ efforts resulted in identification and validation of ten leader behaviors that seem to be essential to servant leadership. The findings concluded that the ten-item scale accounts for 75 percent of the variance with a scale reliability α ¼ 0.96. Convergent validity was determined through comparison to Liden et al. (2008) measure of servant leadership. Discriminant validity was established through confirmatory analysis of leader effectiveness, transformational leadership’s four dimensions, a measure of transactional leadership, and an alternative multi-dimensional measure of servant leadership.

“Appreciative Leadership: Focus on What Works to Build a Thriving Organization”.

Video

Diana Whitney

Diana Whitney defines leadership as a powerful relational process and offers five strategies for extraordinary performance in this new video from her presentation to NC SmartStart entitled “Appreciative Leadership: Focus on What Works to Build a Thriving Organization.” because people have continually wanted to talk to me about overcoming adversity. She has going to make an admission that this phrase never sat right with her, and she always felt uneasy trying to answer people’s questions about it, and she think she started figure out why.”

Distinguishing between transformational and servant leadership

Although transformational and servant leadership has been in existence since the 1970s and theoretical assumptions about the differences began in the 1990s, this paper seeks to relate the first empirical investigation distinguishing between the two leaders, which was conducted recently by the first author.

– Through a review of the literature, the first author established 19 semantic differential scales and two self‐typing paragraphs to differentiate between the two leaders. The scales and paragraphs were formed into an online survey, reviewed by an expert panel, and distributed to 56 randomly selected contacts where 514 participants responded. Through discriminant analysis, five statistically significant (p=0.000) discriminant items were found that differentiated between transformational and servant leadership.

Bridge leadership: a case study of leadership in a bridging organization”,

– The purpose of this research is to examine leadership in an intermediary organization whose mission is to facilitate collaboration between large corporations and their smaller suppliers, a bridging organization. A qualitative approach using a single case revelatory method was adopted. Data were collected from a bridgeleader as well as 20 executives of companies involved in the collaboration.

The analysis revealed that the successful bridge leader tended: to build personal relations and goodwill as a way of creating personal obligations on the part of the stakeholders he led; championed the cause of the stakeholders and made their mission his/her own; created opportunities for individual and collective goal achievement; relied on symbolic behavior and ceremonies to reify the bridge mission; and engaged in frequent communication with a liberal use of humor and playfulness to make goals embraceable by the stakeholders in the collaboration.

Toward a theory of spiritual leadership

Research Paper

Louis W. Fry*

A causal theory of spiritual leadership is developed within an intrinsic motivation model that incorporates vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love, theories of workplace spirituality, and spiritual survival. The purpose of spiritual leadership is to create vision and value congruence across the strategic, empowered team, and individual levels and, ultimately, to foster higher levels of organizational commitment and productivity. The author’s first examine leadership as motivation to change and review motivation-based leadership theories. Second, author notes the accelerating call for spirituality in the workplace, describe the universal human need for spiritual survival through calling and membership, and distinguish between religion and spirituality. Next, he introduce a generic definition of God as a higher power with a continuum upon which humanistic, theistic, and pantheistic definitions of God can be placed. He also review religious and ethics-and-values-based leadership theories and conclude that, to motivate followers, leaders must get in touch with their core values and communicate them to followers through vision and personal actions to create a sense of spiritual survival through calling and membership.